Communication systems are known in the art. Many such systems support transmission of data from one location to another. This data will often comprise electronic symbols (such as a symbol having a particular amplitude and/or phase with respect to a baseline value) that represent particular data quantities or values. Such symbols, when properly received, can be decoded to allow reconstruction of the original message.
Radio frequency communication systems are also known, where such data is transmitted using a radio frequency channel. In a land mobile operating environment, where the sending and receiving unit are moving with respect to one another, channel degradation occurs due to such phenomena as multipath fading. Such degradation can impact symbol recognition and hence the decoding process, leading to an inaccurate interpretation of the data. Various methods are proposed in the art to protect data from channel degradation. To date, however, such solutions typically represent a compromise of one sort or the other, and hence have one or more problems associated with their adoption, including costly reception platforms to support computationally intensive recovery schemes, data throughput reduction (as necessitated, for example, by inclusion of significant error coding or signal diversity of one type or another), and varying standards of reliability as channel conditions vary.
Accordingly, a need exists for a decoding methodology that will address at least some of the above concerns.